=) More new friends

The hospital student's computer room is a nice place to hang out at.

1) There's broadband internet
2) It's quiet but not desolate (I've learnt the difference the hard way)
3) The USB drive works
4) There's a free printer (catch: you need to supply your own paper)
5) The library is just outside
6) You get to meet new people

Just met this girl, Kirithi, from Sabah who's been here for 2 years, and she was such a joy to chat with, we didn't stop talking for the last 20 minutes. Her next posting (next week) is at another hospital that's so much nearer the Glasgow International Airport that she actually had to buy a car last week so she could go there easily. And so she was grousing about how the car arrived but not the insurance papers, and so now she has the car sitting around but she can't drive it! Hmm .. that's what happens when the place is big and your transport system is bonkers.

And what's more, she shares my interest in ophthalmology too, haha. Now, that's rare - people don't usually like this subject. "Boring"; "Too sterile"; "Too small to look at" etc etc. Exactly why I love it. Eye surgeries are remarkably clean and has pinpoint precision, and I do love all the microscopes and gadgets you have to use to make a diagnosis. So instead of writing out silly forms and sending the patients away for the day to do CT scans and whatnot, you actually do the laser photocoagulation therapy with your own hands. Simply because non-ophthalmologists just can't do it. =P

Anyway, Kirithi was nice, she left me with an email addy to get her at. Too bad that this is also her last week here at this hospital, but she did mention that she'll be pleased to bring me around the city if she's in town. Now that's really very nice of her. Chances of that happening are kinda remote, but still it's nice to know that help is here when you need it.

Today, Chris and I went to the eye casualty clinic, while Fiona was in another doc's clinic (I think the doc is from Hong Kong). It was really quite interesting, despite the lack of bulgeing eyeballs ready to explode in your face. There was this case of a lady presenting with angioid streaks in her retina, with a history of Holmes-Adie pupils. Apparently the angioid streaks are classically associated with Paget's Disease of the bone, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, sickle cell disease and pseudoxanthoma elasticum .. very interesting! Recurrent iritis associated with ankylosing spondylitis, herpetic corneal ulcers and stuff like the Weiss ring in complete posterior vitreous detachment. There was also this Egyptian ophthalmologist who's doing a clinical attachment here, so I'll be seeing him also for the next 2 weeks. Had a nice talk about Egypt.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but I met a lot of interesting people en route to Glasgow, on the plane. From Singapore to Dubai, I was sitting next to this family from Cyprus, who were then residing in Australia. And from Dubai to Glasgow, I sat next to a 70+-year-old man from Kenya who was bringing his wife and his 90+-year-old mother-in-law to France to attend a wedding. Had a really enlightening talk about Africa with this man - he's the 4th generation of the first few white people who went to Kenya, and he was expounding to me the virtues of having a holiday in the desert. Odd huh? I also highly endorse flying on Emirates - service was great, food was excellent, inflight entertainment was top-notch, and there's this CCTV thingy in the plane too so that you can see the land falling away from under you as you take off. So in the space of several hours, I managed to see aerial views of Vienna, Munich, Turkey etc all spreading out under the plane. Very nice.

It's nice to have people running up to you from behind and calling out Hi, then walking to hospital together (Fiona). And nice to have lunch with Chris and having him tell me where I should be visiting. But they won't be here for the next 2 weeks. Need some friends here. Maybe I'll contact the Singaporeans and ask if they want to catch The Da Vinci Code movie this weekend.

Now I can't upload ANYMORE pics, because laptop doesn't work = no bluetooth = pics are stuck in phone. I'm beginning to suspect that the room has got something to do with it. I took pics of the room, and when I was about to upload them, the digicam died. Then, I took pics of the room using the phone, and when I uploaded them, the laptop died. Coincidence?!?